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Tag: Independent media

Censoring the Metaverse

Written by Dalia Parete on . Posted in News and Trends.

A post by the Hong Kong independent media outlet Boom News (爆炸頭) commemorating the 14th anniversary this past week of the death of Tiananmen activist Li Wangyang (李旺阳) was removed from social media platforms Facebook and Instagram, both owned by Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.

The posts commemorated Li, a labor organizer and pioneering advocate for independent trade unionism in China who played a leading role in the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement. After 22 years in Chinese prisons, Li was released in 2012 in such poor health that he required immediate hospitalization. He was found dead in his hospital room on June 6 of that year. Authorities ruled his death a suicide and cremated his body without his family’s consent.

Meta offered no public explanation for the takedowns and also permanently terminated the outlet’s monetization on both platforms. The removal coincides with growing restrictions on commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, not only in China, where any reference to June 4 is prohibited and removed from the internet, but also in Hong Kong, where authorities have arrested people for posting about the anniversary on social media and a once-massive annual candlelight vigil is no longer allowed.

Boom News is a YouTube-based platform focusing on Hong Kong stories, with close to 50,000 subscribers on the platform.

Chinese Former Journalist Turns to Substack

Written by LS Staff on . Posted in News and Trends. No Comments on Chinese Former Journalist Turns to Substack

Chinese media personality Mimi Yana (米米亞娜), known for her feminist writing and coverage of women’s issues, launched her Substack account on August 9 following what she described as her forced departure from journalism earlier this year.

In her introductory post, Mimi Yana said that she was “kicked out of the journalism industry by Trump” (被特朗普踢出了新闻业) in early 2025 while working in the United States. Writing that she had “no power to control my own destiny” on “a land that promised democracy and freedom,” she described the experience as accelerating her political disillusionment. She did not spell out the circumstances of her departure, though this was likely related to federal grant arrangements affecting her outlet. The setback led her to delete all social media accounts and avoid reading news for an extended period. “This blow accelerated my disillusionment with politics,” she wrote.

Mimi Yana’s second Substack essay, published August 17 and titled “When Politics Fails, Can Art Answer Our Contemporary Dilemmas?”, explored her search for alternative ways to understand the world following her exit from journalism. The lengthy piece detailed her experiences viewing art exhibitions in Paris museums while grappling with political despair, examining works from David Hockney’s digital paintings during the pandemic to female artists like Suzanne Valadon who challenged male-dominated artistic traditions. The essay blends cultural criticism with personal reflection, questioning whether aesthetic experience might offer insights where political analysis fails.